SharePoint University

 If i'm wanting to change the default fields that are displayed do i need to do more than this?

<property name="CommonViewFields" type="string">KB_x0020_Title,Text;Product,Text;</property>

I made a little progress on this today.

i created a new announcement list and added a column titled xyz with a type of Single line of text.

added a content query web part to my page and set List Type: Announcement. 

Exported the web part and updated this

<property name="CommonViewFields" type="string">xyz,Text</property>

imported the web part back into the page.

Then i changed the  ItemStyle.xsl

                <div class="description">
                    <xsl:value-of select="@xyz" />
                </div>
 and saved my changes.

 what if anything is missing???
 

I've seen a lot of blog posts on this. These links should help you out:

http://www.heathersolomon.com/blog/articles/CustomItemStyle.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/ecm/archive/2006/10/25/configuring-and-customizing-the-content-query-web-part.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb897399.aspx#MOSS2007CustomizingContentQueryWebPartsbyUsingCustomProperties_ExploreIt

Amuro Ray:

I've seen a lot of blog posts on this. These links should help you out:

Thanks Amuro, i think i read most every post on the interwebs yesterday trying to figure this out.  this web part is powerful but is lacking the ease of use for the casual user.